Every man has his price. What's yours? --Jimmy Hoffa If Danny DeVito were a rubber band, he'd be ready to snap. For two days, the director has been trying to shoot a complicated sequence in "Hoffa," which stars Jack Nicholson as Jimmy Hoffa, dark prince of the American labor movement. Nothing is going right. The sound is garbled. Extras knock over chairs. A flock of pigeons flies across the sound stage's cavernous rafters, making a racket.

The FBI said it found no trace of Jimmy Hoffa's body after digging up a suburban Detroit horse farm in one of the most intensive searches in decades for the former Teamsters boss. The two-week search involved dozens of FBI agents, along with anthropologists, archaeologists, cadaver-sniffing dogs and a demolition crew that took apart a barn. Louis Fischetti, supervisory agent with the Detroit FBI, said the tip that led agents to the farm was the best federal authorities had received since 1976.

A former mob hit man and bodyguard to James R. Hoffa told a newspaper that the one-time Teamsters president was slain, ground up, stuffed into a steel drum and dumped in the Florida Everglades. Charlie Allen, who now lives under another identity provided by a witness protection program, told the Richmond, Va., Times-Dispatch that Hoffa was shot with an electric stun gun and murdered after he disappeared from Detroit in late July of 1975.

After tearing apart a barn, FBI agents began digging up the ground where it stood, taking photos and video and sifting through dirt by hand as they searched for Jimmy Hoffa's remains at a suburban Detroit farm not far from where the former Teamsters chief vanished in 1975. After a backhoe dug a hole at the site, FBI agents and crime-scene investigators jumped in to take pictures and comb through the soil. At one point, two cadaver dogs were sent into the hole.

James P. Hoffa, son of the legendary Teamster who disappeared mysteriously 20 years ago, announced Wednesday that he will run for president of the union his father once ran. Before announcing his candidacy during a taping of the "Larry King Live" show in Los Angeles, the 54-year-old Detroit lawyer said he wants to restore "the greatest union in the world that has been sinking because of a lack of leadership." "I was very fortunate to be his son," he said of his late father, James R. Hoffa.

A case known as Gleneagles is a milestone in fraudulent conveyance litigation, not just because of the precedents it set, but because of the role played by the late labor leader James R. Hoffa. Hoffa was one of three men who in 1973 formed a company called Great American to buy the Raymond Group, troubled owner of extensive coal properties in Pennsylvania.

April 11, 1993 | Harry Bernstein, Bernstein has been a labor writer and columnist for The Times for 30 years.

No other union in the world has ever been investigated, damned and praised as much as the Teamsters. More than a dozen books have been written about it. Television and theatrical films have dramatized its sometimes sordid history, the murder of one of its presidents, James R. Hoffa, and the imprisonment of hundreds of its other leaders, including several of its presidents.

Teamsters President Jackie Presser may be worried by the prospect of again facing federal labor fraud charges about the time he opens the giant union's convention in Las Vegas on May 19, but he need not worry about his reelection chances. In fact, scandals involving Teamsters presidents have become something of a tradition in that union, and such scandals have never kept them out of office in the past.

In 1957, Jimmy Hoffa was acquitted of charges of bribing a government official, largely due to the efforts of criminal lawyer Edward Bennett Williams. After the trial, Hoffa left the courtroom without a word of thanks. When Williams complained of Hoffa's ingratitude to Frank Costello, another client, the Mafia don replied: "I told you Hoffa was no gentleman." A tough guy among tough guys, Jimmy Hoffa was America's blue-collar samurai warrior.

The FBI searched property northwest of Detroit for clues to the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, officials said. TV newscasts showed people with shovels and freshly turned dirt at the site. The Teamsters leader was last seen in July 1975 at a restaurant in Oakland County's Bloomfield Township. Agent Dawn Clenney, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Detroit, said the bureau was executing a search warrant in Milford Township, about 35 miles from Detroit.

The FBI searched property northwest of Detroit for clues to the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, officials said. TV newscasts showed people with shovels and freshly turned dirt at the site. The Teamsters leader was last seen in July 1975 at a restaurant in Oakland County's Bloomfield Township. Agent Dawn Clenney, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Detroit, said the bureau was executing a search warrant in Milford Township, about 35 miles from Detroit.

Blood found on the floor of a Detroit home is not that of Jimmy Hoffa, investigators said, ruling out what had looked like one of the most promising recent leads in the disappearance of the Teamsters leader 30 years ago. Authorities had ripped up floorboards last May at a house where Delaware Teamsters official Frank Sheeran said he shot Hoffa to death.

James P. Hoffa, son of the legendary Teamster who disappeared mysteriously 20 years ago, announced Wednesday that he will run for president of the union his father once ran. Before announcing his candidacy during a taping of the "Larry King Live" show in Los Angeles, the 54-year-old Detroit lawyer said he wants to restore "the greatest union in the world that has been sinking because of a lack of leadership." "I was very fortunate to be his son," he said of his late father, James R. Hoffa.

April 11, 1993 | Harry Bernstein, Bernstein has been a labor writer and columnist for The Times for 30 years.

No other union in the world has ever been investigated, damned and praised as much as the Teamsters. More than a dozen books have been written about it. Television and theatrical films have dramatized its sometimes sordid history, the murder of one of its presidents, James R. Hoffa, and the imprisonment of hundreds of its other leaders, including several of its presidents.

Things are finally looking up for Jimmy Hoffa. You remember the story. He took a meeting in 1975 and never came back, vanishing from the parking lot of a suburban Detroit restaurant in the company of bad fellas. Next stop, the Twilight Zone of American legend, a macabre universe somewhere on the dark side of Elvis.

Every man has his price. What's yours? --Jimmy Hoffa If Danny DeVito were a rubber band, he'd be ready to snap. For two days, the director has been trying to shoot a complicated sequence in "Hoffa," which stars Jack Nicholson as Jimmy Hoffa, dark prince of the American labor movement. Nothing is going right. The sound is garbled. Extras knock over chairs. A flock of pigeons flies across the sound stage's cavernous rafters, making a racket.

In 1957, Jimmy Hoffa was acquitted of charges of bribing a government official, largely due to the efforts of criminal lawyer Edward Bennett Williams. After the trial, Hoffa left the courtroom without a word of thanks. When Williams complained of Hoffa's ingratitude to Frank Costello, another client, the Mafia don replied: "I told you Hoffa was no gentleman." A tough guy among tough guys, Jimmy Hoffa was America's blue-collar samurai warrior.